Data

Country-wide, there is a dearth of reliable pedestrian crash data that is publicly available. This prevents us from assessing the quantum and nature of the problem. We are working towards fixing this issue by sourcing crash data directly from the police stations and presenting useful analyses.

Where is our data from?

As an idea, our project owes its origins to discussions on datasets published annually by central ministries and agencies collecting records on road accidents involving pedestrians.

For instance, why does Tamil Nadu consistently top the charts, such as the one below sourced from annual reports published by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH)? Is it due to the state’s use of GIS-based technological solutions to record, analyse and report accidents? Or is it because other states do not report as many road accidents?

Trends in Pedestrian Accidents (top 5 states in 2017)

How or why did pedestrian accidents increase 80 per cent between 2015 and 2016 in Maharashtra? And if fewer pedestrians were victims of road accidents in Madhya Pradesh each year, what is the state doing right that others may not be?

With not much luck finding answers on the web, we decided to ask the agencies publishing the data. At this point, our focus turned to the cities we live in – Bengaluru and Chennai. We had to learn about our own cities before focusing on the rest of the country.

And so we began filing Right to Information (RTI) requests at relevant agencies in these cities. The data obtained as a result forms the basis of our analyses.

In addition, the annual reports published by central agencies and ministries continue to guide us as well in our quest to better understand pedestrian accidents in India.